Guild Wars 2

DarkSpirit.7046:

Why should he be forced to pay so much more than you? You want to save as much gold as you can for yourself, but you don’t want to acknowledge that other people may want to save as much as they can for themselves too.

Again, there isn’t any point even discussing this if people either cannot or will not even accept the basic argument.

I never said anyone should be forced to pay more than me. I said they should be forced to either pay the same as me, or pay a reasonable amount more than me. This gives buyers and sellers real options and enables bid/ask convergence. In the example above, if I offer 4g it doesn’t mean the other guy has to offer 4.5g (or whatever). It means he can offer 4g, or 4.5g or any price above 4.5g. Just not 4.0001g, which is what everyone does now, and which isn’t really a higher bid, just a way to butt in line.

And it looks like my suspicions about the motivations of those defending the current system were at least partially correct.

As mentioned earlier in the thread, a non-refundable price to place a buy offer would solve the problem as well, and be easy to implement. There’s no reason this should be for sellers and not buyers, and it would make people think twice about their niggling “me too, me first” bids.

azizul.8469:

increment only exist in an auction house.

Untrue. Minimum increments exist in ALL exchange systems — auction houses, commodity exchanges, stock exchanges, etc. And they exist to prevent the exact nonsense being discussed in this thread.

Pandemoniac.4739:

I disagree – the incentive is you don’t have to constantly monitor your bids/offers.

Huh? Are we playing the same game?

I just fully geared my first character with exotics and since my gold is tight I couldn’t just buy everything at what was being offered. So I put in bids higher than the current ones but lower than the lowest offer.

Every single item I had to check over and over again and change the bids because someone had overbid me by one copper. In at least one case, after about an hour it looked like this:

4.00.17
4.00.16
4.00.15
4.00.04
4.00.03
4.00.02
4.00.01
4.00.00 <— my bid

In some cases, I had to cancel and rebid 3 or 4 times. If I had left my original bids in, I’d never have gotten my gear, even though multiple pieces would have sold at virtually the same price I offered.

Now, in what universe is this a system that doesn’t require constant monitoring?

If I bid 4g and someone else wants to pay 4.5g, then more power to them. They are actually offering more money. Someone offering 4.00.01g is not (for all intents and purposes) offering more money. He’s just trying to cut in line.

Pandemoniac.4739:

That’s my incentive for choosing the prices I chose and I don’t do the 1 copper thing. It’s a waste of my time. I’ll take (potentially) less profit so I can check the TP once or twice a play session.

You’re again not getting it. It doesn’t matter if you do the 1 copper thing or not. You can increase your bid by 10s, and in less than an hour someone else will overtop you by 1 copper. Maybe you’ll eventually get your item, and maybe you won’t. But you’re guaranteed to get it after the guy who “me too’d” you for a copper.

Pandemoniac.4739:

Basically the complaint is that it’s not fair that someone that is constantly monitoring their bids can sell more quickly than someone who doesn’t.

No, the complaint is that the current system doesn’t encourage actual convergence between bids and asks, it encourages cheesy “me too” bidding that never closes the large gaps in low-volume items. It specifically discourages making higher increment bids, because pretty much no matter what you bid, someone’s going to say “and 1 copper!” and get the item before you do. It makes the trading post more about luck and/or using scripts than actually trying to make fair bids.

I’ve already explained this at least 4 times so either I’m not good at explaining — and I explain stuff for a living — or people just don’t want to hear the argument. Either way, I give up, this thread is pointless. A moderator can just lock it if he/she wishes.

Conncept.7638:

Really? This is the very first MMO I’ve ever been able to stomach getting a fully leveled character, and now I have two and about to be three.

This is the most insanely easy-to-level MMO I’ve ever played. I actually felt on my first char that it was going too fast, I was getting to 80 before I even really knew my class or explored the entire world.

You can get XP doing everything in GW2. Never seen that in a game before.

Never understand complaints like these. If you actually play, you get XP coming out of your ears.

Obtena.7952:

I don’t find the things the OP lists as problems unless a person doesn’t understand how the market works.

Actually, it’s more a matter of a lot of folks in this thread not understanding why the current mechanism leads to inefficiency.

When you decide to bid you should either bid the same as the other people are currently offering, and thus have an equal chance of getting the item, or you should actually go out on a limb and say “I’m willing to pay more”. The current system instead lets people offer no more in real terms, yet go ahead of other bidders. It thus rewards only those with unlimited amounts of time and/or those who use software tools to assist them.

Exactly. There’s no incentive to actually offer to pay more or to offer to sell for less, unless you’re willing to take the current high bid or low offer. So everyone wastes time nickel-and-diming, and those who have the most time (or scripts) to manipulate the market do the best while people actually just looking for a good deal on gear lose out.

That’s a fairly hilarious admission of incompetence by whomever owns that server. It should be called “Mesmers are my daddy” or something.

tolunart.2095:

Whether the minimum increment is 1c, 1s, 1g or 1%, there are people who will always top your bid by the minimum amount they can. It won’t stop the frustrations, in fact it will cause more frustrations because now instead of rebidding 2c higher you have to rebid 2g higher. Then another 2g when the same bidder tops you again, and again…

Actually, no, that’s not the case. I do not have a problem being properly outbid. I have a problem with a system that says “I match his bid but sell to me first”. And that’s what the TP is now. Topping my 12g bid by 0.00083% is NOT a real overbid, it’s just an attempt to skip to the front of the line for offerers.

There’s a reason nearly all systems like this in the real world use minimum increments.

So I think I just had the misfortune to run into one of these while dueling in PvP. It made absolute mincemeat out of my Blackwater build and also when I tried a hybrid PU/phantasm setup. He just kept stunning me and I couldn’t do anything.

I assume this is some variant of what’s being discussed here? Is it really better than a PU build or is he just a better player? I know I should have used staff #2 to break the stun but I either didn’t think of it or it was on cooldown.

Curious how this build compares to the others I’ve been looking at. I got a few more details from him and it seems like a lockdown build so I’m going to try it out.

ETA: Okay, there’s like 20 different lockdown builds in this thread. Having choices is great, but it’s making my head hurt, lol.

Okay, just tried this out. It’s definitely hard to kill, and could be good if all I wanted to do was scout and then get away if discovered. But — at least in my newbie hands — it’s quite impotent in the damage departments. I’ve hung in against tough warriors and others for a fair bit of time, but I never really dent them damage wise. And as soon as all my utilities and heals are on cooldown, I’m finished.

Does seem useful for practicing and learning, but not sure how practical in the “real world”.

Sanduskel.1850:

Most of us like the class and are looking forward to the patch.

That would be the “most of us” that you just called “horrible players”, right?

I think most thieves are happy to have exploits like perma-stealth removed. But most definitely are not happy about all the other changes being made that damage builds having nothing to do with perma-stealth, and add little that’s new and exciting to the class.

Some of you continue to miss the point. Nobody is saying that what is happening right now is invalid or whatnot. What I (and others) are saying is that the current system provides a poor incentive and reward structure that discourages constructive bidding.

Obviously anyone can just buy whatever the lowest offer is. The point is those who want to buy for a lower amount right now can essentially say “I will buy it at the same price as the previous high bidder, but I go first before him”. That’s not a smart market mechanism as it discourages competition. It also provides an advantage to people who stand around the TP all day.

Again, by way of example. There’s some item I want, but the lowest offer is currently 20g which I think is too high. The current high offer is, say, 11g. I think that’s too low. So I put in an offer of 12g.

An hour later, some joker has put in an offer of 12.0001g. He didn’t actually make a conscious choice to bid 12g, he just said basically “me too, and me first”. Now I have to cancel my bid and get into a copper-war with this clown.

Or, I can decide to raise my bid to 12.5g. And again, an hour later, some other guy will bid 12.5001g.

The point is that the people with the copper increments aren’t really bidding more. They’re just butting in line. Why people can’t grasp this concept is beyond me, though I’d imagine a lot of the people objecting are in fact the ones that do little but stand around the TP all day…

Thanks for all the replies!

I do like the shortbow but I’m not sure it’s a great complement to the P/D build because as you guys said, it’s power-based and the P/D is a condition build. Also, P/D is already mostly a ranged weaponset while D/D is better for within melee and deathblossom synergizes nicely with the condition damage.

Now that is interesting, Faeyd. Never seen anything like that before. I assume the dual DD is just for the sigil swapping effect? I’ll try it out in PvP and if it works well maybe you can show me what a WvW version might look like.

I’m still working on my “Blackdevil/Blackwater hybrid” so to speak, but it looks somewhat interesting so far. The basic configuration is Blackdevil’s build but 20/20/30/0/0, adding the GS boost and dropping Mender’s Purity, then dealing with conditions using sigils, food and possibly the mantra if need be. With rabid trinkets and berserker’s armor and weapons. More aggressive, and the condition removal might not be enough in which case this hybrid won’t work, but we’ll see. I’d use this more for PvE and WvW zerging if I engage in such.

The defensive configuration is more like Blackwater, with a rabid staff, torch and scepter, dire armor, and changing the GS boost to the torch cleanse. This setup doesn’t have nearly as much condition damage as the all-rabid Blackwater, but it has more defense and would be used in situations where I just want to stay alive.

Both allow me to avoid having to spend a lot of gold on rabid armor until I’m sure I want to. I’d likely start with exotic trinkets and weapons and just rare armor.

BlackDevil.9268:

@ Qaelyn

1. sword is a really special skill. Imo, if you master how to use this skill, you will never make a build without sword again.

Oh, I know you’re right. I avoided it a lot at the beginning because it’s confusing, but am starting to appreciate it.. especially used defensively. Lots of fun when a melee type rushes up and gets a bunch of slashes to the face he wasn’t expecting.

But it is definitely tricky to master.

BlackDevil.9268:

2. It can be used as gap opener -> For example: you cast your #3 leaping to the enemy, you run away but the enemy runs after you. The enemy is faster than your clone and is really close to you, while the clone is still slacking behind. Just use it again and you got your gap opener. This is really usefull against multiple enemies. Run away from them, cast #3, wait a few seconds, go into stealth, use #3 again, blink 180 degrees and run away from them. Succesful escape 90% of the time.

So this is interesting, you use it as a misdirection. You cast the clone while running away, which causes it to run backwards towards them. They keep chasing and the clone can’t keep up… then you swap with the clone and run in the opposite direction using blink. Is that right?

BlackDevil.9268:

4. Casting it 1-3 seconds later than usual gives a fair amount of them wasting their dodge and it gives you the ability to time the immobilize better with your phantasm attacks.

This is the part in your description that I didn’t get. You just mean to delay between the first 3 and the second 3?

BlackDevil.9268:

Idk what your toughness will be when you do that, but I guess lower than when you would go rabid armor and zerk accessory.

Actually it doesn’t. I put both into a calculator. Here’s what I found.

Compared to rabid armor and berserker trinkets, going with berserker armor and rabid trinkets yields:

-101 power
-90 precision (-4.3% crit chance)
-20% crit damage
+193 condition damage
+30 toughness
+90 vitality

The biggest differences are in crit damage, where the alternate is about 30% lower, and condition damage, where the alternate setup is a full 50% higher.

Not suggesting this is better than yours, mind you, just looking for a viable way to swap between your build and a classic Blackwater so I can try out both fully without getting 2 full sets of gear.

Am I correct that critical damage isn’t as important in this build as critical chance because the crits are mainly about the clones applying bleeds?

Thanks!

Okay, another question on this, and related to the Blackwater. Sorry for all the questions, I think I have this almost figured out.

The two builds are fairly similar. Blackwater calls (mostly) for all rabid gear. This build seems to use rabid armor and mostly berserkerish trinkets and berserker weapons.

For this build, instead of rabid armor and berserker trinkets could I go with berserker armor and rabid trinkets? The berserker armor is a lot cheaper since I could start with yellows. And I could swap it for, say, carrion or dire, if I want to swap to a more defensive Blackwater setup with staff.

Thoughts?

Sanduskel.1850:

Most thieves are horrible players and don’t understand how easy their class is. Stealth classes attract that type of player.

When I first started reading the thief subforum and saw you claim you had 5 thief alts, I thought I should pay attention to your posts. But increasingly they are all as unconstructive as the above, which is likely how you’ve earned the reputation you have there now. I’m not sure what you’re trying to accomplish, but it doesn’t seem like anything positive.

I’m a new player but not a horrible one and I find thief substantially more difficult to play than warrior or even mesmer. This is not supposed to be a game that requires supreme twitch skills to be viable, and right now there is little reason for anyone to roll a thief other than deliberately wanting a challenge.

Viking Jorun.5413:

Let me quote this for the pinnacle of truth. I don’t know what ANet wants us to do. I’d have loved to keep my s/p dodge build, but s/p was kitten as it was and now we’re being forced into stealth to keep up with every other class.

This is pretty much the point I’m trying to make. I just don’t see a lot of viable builds in that class compared to others.

Hey all,

Some great help provided in this forum, thanks from this newbie!

I’m a bit perplexed (har) about how things transfer between player abilities and illusions, however. Does anyone have a list of what things that affect players also affect clones and/or phantasms? Meaning gear effects, temporary effects like bloodlust stacks, boons, conditions and so forth? Useful to know in planning a build.

Thanks again!

Thanks Hype. That does mean staying in melee range a lot just using the pistol though right? I find that tends to be.. painful.

Am I better off with the more conservative dire or more aggressive carrion? While I do like being defensive I found with dire I do little damage. Or maybe rabid to ramp up the crits somewhat? Though with little crit damage boost, not sure that makes sense either.

I’m ready to gear up for P/D (got 120 gold saved already) but I want to do it once, not five times.

Yeah I think one of the biggest challenges for me is learning how to stealth using CnD effectively. It seems key for the backstab DD builds.

As for PD, it’s a condition build, so the question then becomes what to use the stealth on. I’ve been practicing with stealth on steal, doing that, then unloading #1 to get a stack of bleeds and using #3 for the torment and then getting out of melee range.

But I’m usually not sure what to do after that.

I do find myself sometimes swapping to DD for its #3. I know I’ve read a lot of people saying it’s “useless” but maybe they mean in a backstab build? It seems to apply a lot of condition damage.

Backstabbing in this build seems rather pointless as there’s not enough crit “oomph” for it to matter.

Shadow what do you recommend to complement PD?

Shadowscamp, I’ve changed builds a number of times. I was in WvW last night using a PD/DD build, either with dire or carrion gear. Just yellows and greens, I can’t afford to start dropping gold on exotics until I figure out a build. The one I was using is a condition build so low crit damage… it’s the Laela Blackbird build, which I thought might better suit me since I usually prefer defensive play, and it’s got good toughness and vitality.

More than that, I need practice.. a lot of practice.

At the present time I count roughly 10 threads in the front page of the thief forum talking nerfs, or wondering about if people will continue playing the class after Dec 10, or asking how to adjust to the coming changes that destroy existing builds. I see nothing comparable anywhere else, and certainly not the warrior forum.

I’d be fine with what ATMAvatar suggested. But they always seem to reduce the viability of the class without providing anything new to replace what they remove.

Funny how in this thread everyone’s talking about how OP thieves are, but in the profession-specific forum everyone’s complaining about how weak the class is becoming and speculating over how many people will stop playing thief after the December 10th patch.

General consensus seems to be that getting rid of permastealth is a good thing, but that every time some “OP” ability of thieves is removed, it’s not balanced with anything new they can do instead.

After playing a thief for a couple of weeks, IMO the thieves who can dominate in combat are that way because they’re incredibly good players. On my warrior I can be effective with little effort or experience. On my thief I get my butt handed to me all the time and probably will for the next 6 months until I get better at it.

Given that everywhere I look these days I see warriorwarriorwarriorwarriorwarriorwarriorwarriorwarriorwarriorwarriorwarrior I don’t think it’s thieves that need even more restraining. They’ve already been subjected to a lot of it, and at least when a thief is really good it’s because the player is really good.

Bottom line: if you want to nerf stealth into utter uselessness, then what do you replace it with? If all you’re going to do is say to remove it, then I guess you might as well remove the whole class.

Indeed, thanks. Unclear on the first part, are you saying that rather than the usual 3/3/2 to immobilize and then slice up the opponent you delay on the 3 so they don’t dodge the immobilize? I’m a bit unsure what you mean there.

Any gear suggestions for someone who can’t easily get rabid?

Shadowscamp: That’s the thing, I’m really not in control in most cases. I don’t have the skill yet to kill anything and often can’t really get away either. A more defensive spec lets me get away more easily but also means I often on the defensive, unable to kill others or really press any advantage. So the classic “is the best defense a good offense?” question.

ChapDev.7650:

You do not always need one equipped (Personally I only roam with one Pistol and Dagger to perma poison with Sigil of Doom)

Could you explain what you mean here please?

ChapDev.7650:

Buying an Invisible slot bag for your Inventory is useful for this as anything you place in there won’t show up to sell to Merchants or the Tradepost so is a good place to drop your Shortbow. (Though still appears for Mystic Forge so don’t forge it!)

Yeah I use those, thanks.

ChapDev.7650:

Don’t let this get you down! It doesn’t matter what anyone else says it’s the truth of the matter that a Thief is no longer the easiest class to play and learning to manage your skills and initiative will take some time, just keep trying heck if your server is doing any fight clubs go join in it is risk free experience in 1v1 scenario’s.

I’ve been using sPVP for this, but some builds don’t translate well there.

ChapDev.7650:

…just try to calm yourself and slow down a little you have stealth to give you breathing room/time so you don’t have to use all of your Initiative/Utilities immediately.

I’m not good under pressure in general so maybe I will view this as a way of improving that.

Lifeson: As the saying goes, “looks good on paper.”

Any suggestions from those who play this build on how to best use it? Openings, good combos, etc? Thanks.

Thanks. Those are all things I could do only once (at least for a while) so I’ll have to make sure I really want to go this route first. I really need a build I can use for PvE as well so I’d love to hear how people adjust this build for that if possible.

Sepahbod.4653:

It ok in Dungeons, but the great thing with this 20/20/30 build is that just by switching gear to power/knight and changing a few traits it will become a decent power build.

This is a comment from a month ago but it would be helpful to me (and likely many others) if someone could explain how to do this conversion? I’m considering going with a Blackwater build for WvW but want something viable for dungeons as well.

As an aside (though still on-topic for this thread) what’s a good way for a newbie to acquire rabid armor such as used in this build? Thanks.

I am utterly fascinated by WvW because it’s the only experience I’ve had in gaming where I really feel like “I’m there”… really gets the heart pumping. (I know, you don’t lose much if you die, but I still hate dying!)

Anyway, I’ve done the “run in a zerg” thing and it doesn’t interest me. I decided to make a character just for doing stuff in WvW either solo or maybe in a small group. I’m still very new to WvW (and the game as a whole).

I made a thief because I like the idea of a sneaky, stealthy, spy-type character. I’ve still got a long way to go on the learning curve there, though, as I’m finding it difficult to nail down all the skills and the right build. So as of now I’m not really in a good position to be a raider who can do a lot of damage, I’d probably be really looking more at the sneaky role.

Anyway.. what are some things I can do that would help my team?

Funny the difference between theory and reality.

Went into WvW with my guild today and was in a small raiding group (awesome.. just what I wanted to do!) And I realized.. I need my shortbow! The teleport alone is essential. So that sort of did away with the PD+DD or PD+DP decision, at least for this role.

I got into a couple of 1v1 fights which went.. poorly. LOL It really is going to take a while, eh? Of course in this role dying frequently is par for the course… but still, I just sort of panic when I realize I am actually fighting.

Thanks for some sound advice and encouragement!

I tend to be an experimenter by nature and so I try something and if it seems like it’s not good I start tinkering or want to try different methods or builds or gear. This works great much of the time, but sometimes I get into a pattern where I’m changing things so quickly that I never give anything a fair shot and thus end up going in circles. Probably have been doing that here.

So I stepped back a bit and thought about why I wanted to make a thief. It was primarily to enable me to do things in WvW other than be in the “zerg”, which I find tedious. I don’t know a lot about WvW to be honest but I was hoping I might be able to scout, report on happenings, maybe take down a dolyak or wreak some havoc.

To that end it seems I don’t really need to work on being a lightning-fast backstab expert anyway. What I want to do is more consonant with the Blackbird build. I got my thief to 80 and set up approximately in that build (no fancy gear, yellows and greens) and am working on learning the weapons and combos — and there are a LOT of combos! LOL. This is just in PvE until I get more comfortable.

I’m already tinkering of course. I really like the stealth-on-steal ability and gave up the regen trait for that, at least for now. I’m also toying with running carrion gear rather than dire .. it seems to give a bigger offense boost than dire gives a defense boost. I’m keeping both gear sets and will swap between them and maybe even mix them.

I may also end up PD+DD instead of PD+DP. I like having CnD always available, and I’m thinking death blossom may be underrated in a condition build.

Any further thoughts welcome! Thanks again.

Valid points. Never played GW1 and there’s always something new and awesome coming out (until it comes out, usually). I’d certainly love to see more build variety and more skill options, though for me personally there’s already quite a lot to try to master.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

In a game that was advertised as not item centric, everything is about farming items or gold to buy items.

In fact, getting rid of all items would free people. But I do not think that most players in Guild Wars 2 would be ready for this. The carrot, it has to be hunted.

Seems to me it’s the opposite. You have a bunch of people who aren’t happy unless they have something to hunt, so Anet gave them something. Of course most of them now complain that it’s too hard to catch, but if they caught it, they’d then complain that they had nothing to do.

Phy.2913:

While this is mostly sarcasm, this would be the only way to stop farming.

Absolutely false.

It’s exactly like class balance adjustment — if too many people are using something in a way that the developers find unbalanced, small tweaks can change it. No reason to get rid of anything.

In this case people are abusing (IMO) the champion system, because it gives easy rewards in minimal time. So you make the rewards better match the time and effort required, or you limit them. This removes the champion farming as the “go to” method, which encourages people to do other things. Not all of them will have the same #2 choice; if most do, then you adjust that.

You continue until when people ask “what’s the best way to make gold?” they get a dozen different answers or “depends what you enjoy”. Just as in a good game “what’s the best class” gets a bunch of different answers or “depends what you enjoy”.

Phy.2913:

No, human nature will cause them to find the next easiest farm. If you need evidence, just open your eyes.

Another non-response.

If something else gets farmed, you adjust that. You keep adjusting until people are doing a variety of things.

This isn’t difficult. It just requires a bit of time and attention.

Well I’ve certainly done a lot of dying.

I appreciate the advice and know it’s true in a general sense. I ask a lot about builds because this is difficult enough without adding poor build choices into the mix. I also don’t have unlimited funds to keep buying and salvaging gear.

I generally use the approach you mentioned in MMOs, but with thief I’ve been lagging so far behind in terms of both killing and surviving that I’ve felt I needed more help. It’s not from a lack of effort, and I really haven’t skipped the basics. I’m just.. not very good at it.

I was just in the Straits trying to get to my next personal story checkpoint. Ended up doing the south path chain .. two or three other people joined in. It was great fun. If it had been myself I would have wiped; if it had been 10 people it would have been a snooze. We barely got the gate down, then the NPCs died on the last part and we had to fight our way to the mustering area ourselves.

You don’t need a lot of people to make the events fun. One friend and you can have a blast.

Randomizing timers is just another variation on what I said: make it so no particular part of the game is far more rewarding for the risk and effort involved. That is what balance is all about!

Phy.2913:

What would actually happen is the complete abandonment of champion kills.

Provide some actual evidence or reasoning to back up that claim, and I might consider it.

But you’re going against well-known human nature, which is pretty easy to predict, especially in areas such as gaming. Like water, the players flow through the path of least resistance. Given them a reason to do a variety of things across all maps, and they will do a variety of things across all maps. Right now they don’t have that incentive, so they just do the champion circle nonsense.

Thanks, that’s useful stuff.

I don’t really have the skills yet for thief in PvP, was using it mostly to test builds I hope to use in WvW, and I get the caveats.

The problem for me with Yishis’s build is that, bluntly, I’m not good enough to make it work. I don’t have the reflexes and coordination, and don’t know enough about other characters’ strengths and weaknesses yet. I might try going back to the condition build, though I will need to get some better gear to make that work.

Astralporing.1957:

Qaelyn.7612:

After that, you get greatly reduced rewards. Ta-da — champion farming is fixed.

Too bad that it doesn’’t help any in the problem that OP posed, right? Nor does it “fix” anything else, really.

It absolutely does, by balancing rewards and providing an incentive for people to do a multitude of activities rather than just one.

Take just one simple change: each champion drops a bag only once per character per day. Immediately instead of having huge percentages of players farming two maps, you’d have players all over every map.

Now greatly increase the first-time rewards for doing hearts or DEs. Again, you will see a lot more people exploring and doing different things.

Use mapchat and join an active guild. Ask for some company and you’ll likely get it. Doesn’t solve the underlying problem but it’s all you can really do as a player.

cesmode, are you on a busy server? I’m on TC and while I often don’t see a lot of people, I very rarely run around for more than 15 minutes before seeing another player. Some areas are more barren than others of course.

Have you tried using one of the websites that tracks the timing on the big open-world events?

Are you in a decent-sized guild where you might be able to find a friend to run an area with?

Why bother with draconian solutions when simple ones are available?

First time you do a champion per day you get the current reward, or even one a little better. After that, you get greatly reduced rewards. Ta-da — champion farming is fixed. Or maybe it will become more of a train that goes to champions all over different maps, which also would be an improvement as at least then people in the area could participate.

These are not difficult problems to solve.

As mentioned in another thread, it’s VERY simple to fix this: make exploring open areas more rewarding. Start by adding item rewards for dynamic events and multiplying coin awards for hearts (with a cooldown to prevent mass-repetition of the easiest ones). You’ll see lots more player in the open world.

I also encourage use of mapchat. I’ll often be in an area that seems “empty” and then someone says “need help with X” and we find there were actually quite a few of us around..

Thanks. My guess is that in general the ability to pump up condition damage more in WvW than PvP also has an effect. I’ve noticed this in other areas as well, which I guess is why people warn me not to test WvW stuff in PvP. I do it anyway because it’s a lot easier and cheaper to swap stuff around but need to remember the differences…

Kaon.7192:

Completely agreed with OP.

Outbidding with a negligible increment allows people to essentially bypass the FIFO queue for orders on the TP.

If a buyer or seller wants to buy or sell an item faster than everyone that has placed the order earlier, he needs to be willing to take a loss that is significant relative to the price of the item. 1c on a 10g item is not a significant loss by any measure, and makes a complete joke out of the FIFO order queuing system.

There is simply no reason to adhere to the queue (on any item that costs over a few silvers) by posting an order after the existing ones at a certain price point, because you can simply cut ahead of everyone else for 1c.

Instead of having real productive competitive bidding to quickly drive prices toward equilibrium, we have countless filler orders that are essentially the same price point to potential buyers/sellers, that do nothing except cheat early listers out of their rightful timing in order fulfillment.

Thank you. That’s it in a nutshell.

Old rule in economics: you get more of what you subsidize.

In the real world, subsidies create farming product imbalances by encouraging farmers to grow items that wouldn’t be worth growing otherwise. The same happens in games when the rewards are out of whack for the effort involved.

The solution to farming is thus simple: lower the rewards on activities being farmed and/or increase rewards on activities that are getting less attention. Another is to institute time limits — there’s no reason you should get a nice reward for killing any given champion more than once a day, just as the best rewards in other areas are only once a day.

Make it so you only get one bag per day per champion. Then multiply the silver reward for completing open world events by, say, 20, but again, only once per day. And you’ll be amazed to find that people will once again travel the open world doing lots of different things.

Thanks Shadow.

It’s funny because his build has blind-on-stealth but I think I took it off in favor of condition removal because he had none at all. But now I see the value of it.

There’s also stealth-on-steal which I found helped as I could open with a steal+backstab. But it just doesn’t do enough damage to be effective.

Anyone know of a good PvP-specific build? Though I guess that won’t help me with my ultimate goal of a good WvW harrassment thief.

Thanks to Natsu for this build, a PvP version of which I’m currently running in duels as I attempt to learn this class.

It’s fun because you need to stay on your toes, and because I love when warriors come raging at me and hit a block and then limp off to deal with all the torment stacks. It seems to make short work of some very aggressive players.

Against defensive players it’s a different matter. Just went around in circles with a guardian for oh 10 minutes before we agreed to call it a draw. If the opponent has good defense and especially good condition removal, doesn’t seem to be much way to take them down.

Just the way the build is? Or am I playing it wrong? Or is there an adjustment to be made to deal with such?

Thanks.

I may have missed it but it would really be useful to help new players get into PvP if there were ranks or difficulty levels or some means of segmenting players by experience.. even just for casual games. As a new player I expect to get beaten a LOT but even so it’s frustrating to get destroyed over and over and over again. Only the hardy will stick through this — most will say ‘screw it’ and do something else.

Also, I’m trying to learn to improve my (bad) PvP skills by participating in a couple of 1v1 duel servers. These are a great idea but they are implemented as a kludge because there doesn’t seem to be a formal 1v1 dueling mechanism. It works but it’s klunky.. people have to avoid stomping so you don’t have to run back, people attack by accident, trolls gank people to be annoying, have to keep switching teams, duels interfere with each other, etc.. Seems it wouldn’t be too hard to make a formal ‘dueling mode’, which would also help with learning.